Love and Portuguese

[Lawyer&Mom]

Just chiming in with a little solidarity. I also have unilateral hearing loss, and as a result I can have a big emotional reaction to not understanding/not being understood in conversations. I try to gently remind myself that the communication trauma is from my childhood when I was dependent on others, and that I’m a big grownup now, I can take care of myself, there is nothing to be afraid of anymore. (This doesn’t always work!) I’m also Autistic, so there are layers and layers to the trauma… I’m sure my lifelong interest in foreign languages is also related it it all somehow. But, yes, the struggle is real, be gentle with yourself. Feel the big feelings when they come up to the surface. It’s a good sign that your body feels safe enough now to let some of this out!

[SophiaMerlin_II]

Just chiming in with a little solidarity. I also have unilateral hearing loss, and as a result I can have a big emotional reaction to not understanding/not being understood in conversations. I try to gently remind myself that the communication trauma is from my childhood when I was dependent on others, and that I’m a big grownup now, I can take care of myself, there is nothing to be afraid of anymore. (This doesn’t always work!) I’m also Autistic, so there are layers and layers to the trauma… I’m sure my lifelong interest in foreign languages is also related it it all somehow. But, yes, the struggle is real, be gentle with yourself. Feel the big feelings when they come up to the surface. It’s a good sign that your body feels safe enough now to let some of this out!

Thankfully my hearing loss doesn't stem from childhood, that must be so difficult to go through. I just have to constantly remind myself to keep my expectations reasonable. I try not to expect myself to be able to do in other languages what I cannot do in English. For example, most podcasts & audiobooks, and a large portion of videos/movies/TV I struggle through or can't even understand in English.

My boyfriend posted a video of a song the other day, and I had to ask him if it was in English because I could only understand 4-5 words of the chorus and nothing else -- it was.

It's easier the better I know someone because I get used to how they sound, and if know the context because I have a really good ability to guess by this point. So I can talk to my mom about almost anything, but at times with videos and things I get really lost, even in English.

I stopped seeing movies in theaters for the most part because of it, I only watch shows and YT videos with subtitles now, even in English, with only a few exceptions of people I already know I'll be able to understand.

Most of the Portuguese videos I'm watching don't have Portuguese subtitles, so I'm trying to be gentle with myself. I watched a 10 minute video this morning that had a guest speaker and I don't think she had a heavy accent but I think I understood maybe 2-3 words out of the whole 10 minutes. It's discouraging but of course it will be hard at first. Just gotta keep trying.

Sometimes when I think about my, I guess, "learning diabilities"(?) it makes me kinda depressed. but I try to focus on what I can control instead.

So thank you for your support. I just have to keep trying. It's better to be embarrassed now and get it out of the way. I got over it with Spanish and Japanese, so I can get over it with Portuguese also.

[SophiaMerlin_II]

My last lesson went well, in the sense that my anxiety was a lot more manageable.

We spent more time switching between cultural stuff and language stuff and that helped a lot. A little of her telling me about the culture in English, then us working on pronunciation.

Unfortunately my internet crashed halfway through! But it is going well, IMO. She sent me some voice messages to practice on my own until the next lesson

[StringerBell]

I just have to constantly remind myself to keep my expectations reasonable. I try not to expect myself to be able to do in other languages what I cannot do in English.

This is something I have to remind myself, too! I have some pretty annoying issues with auditory/working memory; I have a lot of compensation strategies in English to deal with it (which often involves writing things down). Once I see something written it's very easy for me to process but holding info in my head is sometimes impossible. But then I have unrealistic expectations and assume I should suddenly be able to do this in a language I'm learning.

I'm glad to hear your next lesson went better!

[SophiaMerlin_II]

OMG yes! Especially verbal instructions for something I'm not familiar with!!!

I sometimes visualize the instructions written down and it helps. Might be useful for you!

[StringerBell]

I sometimes visualize the instructions written down and it helps. Might be useful for you!

I often do this, too! A lot of times during conversations I actually visualize the words written as if I'm reading the conversation that I'm having. I also internally repeat what the other person is saying as they're talking - I recently realized that I'm basically mentally shadowing what other people are saying in my native language almost all the time but I wasn't really doing this with Italian and that might be one of the reasons I was having so much trouble remembering things. I had this epiphany recently where I realized that I should be trying to use these same strategies in other languages that I use in English.

You mentioned that you can't really understand podcast and audiobooks even in English. I'm curious if you have ever tried listening to an audiobook while reading the physical book and then just listening to the audio without the text (in the other languages you were learning)?

[SophiaMerlin_II]

I can't say Portuguese has been going well, because it hasn't really been "going" at all. God bless my tutor, she's so nice, but it's really not going how I would have hoped & I don't think she has any idea what I'm trying to do at all. So I guess I'll try to go through the resources that were recommended earlier in the thread and see if they help because otherwise I'm just going to keep reading the Portuguese words in "Spanish". I could ask my boyfriend more questions about things, but I get so easily embarrassed + we have trouble communicating what things sound like sometimes. For example, he stays a "glottal t" like in button sounds "like an r" but obviously when he thinks of an "r" and when I think of an "r" we are thinking of very different sounds.

I can't remember if I told you about this exactly. When I went to Japan, I knew a lot about it culturally, some of it very obscure, but I knew a LOT about why things were done specific ways. So when I went to Tokyo, everything was exactly as I had expected. I liked what I expected to like, I disliked what I expected to dislike, I found convenient what I expected, and was able to just accept the rest. I was surprised only about twice while I was there. Once about "Yankee sitting" and the other about eating the fat on a steak.

I was expressing to my boyfriend that the prospect of moving to Brazil without knowing a lot more about it was intimidating, and so I had been wondering how to get to that level of cultural knowledge of Brazil on purpose (for Japan it was just years of weebish curiousity). And it prompted him to ask me, "Do you think you won't be able to come?" And I don't know, him asking me that just really surprised me a lot. I don't know about all the paperwork for actually moving somewhere, but for just visiting (other than Covid) it's pretty simple.

He meant, "would you be too nervous to physically come?" and I just... I didn't really know how to respond other than to say, "I'm not talking about physically coming or not, I'm talking about having an okay time when I first get there."

I'm such a nervous person and often worry a lot about how others perceive me and my actions. In that way, Japan was great because there were a lot of well-formulated rules that I could just follow and my behavior would be more or less tolerable. Maybe not perfect, I messed up on a few things, but I never made a total fool of myself.

And so I didn't mean to imply to him that I would be too nervous to go to Brazil, though he took it that way I think, even after I explained. I just meant that I would have a better time if I knew what to expect. We got into a discussion about grocery stores and bagging groceries and then he seemed to understand more what I was talking about, but then had a moment of doubting himself and suddenly wondered if the way he helps the cashier bag his groceries is because that's socially expected, or because he's socially awkward. So that was slightly not reassuring. But he was much easier with trying to answer my "would it be normal for a person to -- " and "when most people --, what do they normally do" type of questions, so that was nice.

You mentioned that you can't really understand podcast and audiobooks even in English. I'm curious if you have ever tried listening to an audiobook while reading the physical book and then just listening to the audio without the text (in the other languages you were learning)?

I haven't, but I'm willing to try it.

[SophiaMerlin_II]

I saw an audio book service that costs $3USD/mo so I signed up and am gonna try audiobooks again. It has the text too, but I can’t read one wile listening to the other unfortunately. I can listen then study the passage, then listen again though.

I’m gonna use the FSI materials bc they explain the pronunciation a lot better, imo.

So just gonna watch vids, listen to audiobooks, and FSI at a leisurely pace.

[SophiaMerlin_II]

Been sick.

Listening to audiobook bit by bit, trying to be gentle with myself. I have it on 75% speed. It’s going okay. The narrator’s voice is fairly clear.

I got Duolingo, even tho I don’t like it, bc it’s not intimidating so it counts as doing SOMETHING...

Joined two Twitter spaces for Portuguese— one on Weds and one on Sundays. I haven’t said a single word in Portuguese in either... too scared.

[SophiaMerlin_II]

Been at my parent’s house.

Been doing Duolingo, mostly to just get over my anxiety. Not taking it overly seriously, just having fun, I guess.

I wrote my first sentences in Portuguese with a little help on Twitter:

“Hoje, meu avô fez uma festa de aniversário. Ele tem 80 anos.

É a primeira vez que encontro meu primo Josh desde 2011. Agora, ele tem uma esposa e 4 filhos (2 meninos e 2 meninas). Que lindos.

Minha avó bebe muito vinho.”

(Corrections totally fine, but I don’t really know how to conjugate yet)

I also was able to tell my boyfriend “feliz ano novo” in a voice message. I wanted to say it on the phone but I forgot bc I was so excited to talk to him.

Not much else to report.

Itching to study Japanese and Spanish all the time when I’m learning Portuguese. I’ve never been excited about learning Spanish before in my life. It’s really odd. After I get settled in again at home, might consider picking back up RTK. I was at about 900 last time.